I haven't seen this on any other IBM thinkpad, I bought my IBM T40 off of eBay, the whole computer is great, except the lid of it has a dull look to it. It is very flat black and almost looks like it has speckles of glitter deep in it. Has anybody ever heard of somebody needing to restore the finish to the lid of their laptop? Any idea of what I COULD use to try to do it?
Try hanging it from a clothes line and throwing buckets of paint at it till it becomes a personalized, ARTISTIC masterpiece!

[size=24]S P L A T ! [/size]

He he .. it almost looks green in that picture.

Since you're just looking to refinish it rather than find out why it dulled like that... I SUGGEST you just remove the plastics and do like PcDoc said... have FUN with some new colors. You could make it Neon!I have no idea why it did dull, the screen is fine, and the rest of it seems to have it's finish so I am happy... I suppose I will just semi-flat black it... or chrome! I was just wondering if anybody tried restoring the color. Rather than painting over it. Well thanks for the replies, ScottIf it has gone dull then maybe it could just do with some lacquer? A tin of spray-on car lacquer would probably do the job. Make sure you mask delicate parts, holes etc. first!I would leave it alone. I have a T20 which has some strange areas of loss of blackness, but they don't bother me. I work on the inside!
<--- agrees with GX1. Any paint in the wrong place would likely damage the laptop.